Disabled People

Lord Holmes of Richmond Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in today’s debate and I congratulate my noble friend Lord Borwick on having such a visionary title for it. Few people have done as much as he has on access to transport, not least when it comes to London’s licensed taxis. We should all be incredibly thoughtful on that point when others seek to let new entrants into the taxi market. That same level of access should absolutely be guaranteed before they are given a licence in this city. I must, however, pull up my noble friend on his most pessimistic point. I have no doubt that he will celebrate his 115th birthday. I look forward to celebrating it with him, when I will be a mere child of 97.

There is much I would have liked to cover in today’s debate—education, employment, social inclusion and everything around the fourth industrial revolution, not least artificial intelligence—but I will limit myself mainly to the issue of public appointments. Outside your Lordships’ House, who even knows what a public appointment is? Yet there are more than 6,000 public appointments to 500-plus public bodies responsible for the governance of over £200 billion of public expenditure. For that reason and many more, I was delighted to accept an invitation from my right honourable friend the Minister for Implementation, Oliver Dowden, a year ago, to lead a review into public appointments in the United Kingdom, not least what was happening for disabled people.

There are 6,000-plus public appointments. Currently, 3% are held by disabled people. That is around 180 public appointments. When compared to the overall figure, perhaps we should consider them public disappointments. People fortunate enough to hold public appointments often hold a number of them, which actually means that fewer than 180 disabled people exercise those most important functions in our society. I wanted to look at the reasons that so few disabled people came forward, even fewer were appointed and why we knew so little about the disability status of all people applying for public appointments.

Giving an inclusive and accessible approach to applying for a public appointment is not seeking to give a disabled person an advantage or a leg-up; it is merely enabling disabled people to apply with fairness, dignity and respect. Allowing alternative means to apply for that public appointment is not giving a neurodiverse person an unfair advantage. It may be the difference between them being able and unable to apply for a public appointment at all.

I will share some of the recommendations of my review, not least because my intention in doing the review was that these would be specific to public appointments but would have wider application across all areas of public, private and third-sector life. First, to set a target, 11.3% of all public appointments should be held by disabled people by 2022, with a review held this summer. I do not believe that 11.3% should be a ceiling, but an interim target. It reflects the current target for disabled participation in the senior Civil Service. I ask my noble friend the Minister whether she agrees with that target of 11.3% and what progress is being made towards it. By 2022, I believe we should be well set to go beyond that target.

I wanted the whole review to be focused through the lens of talent, because that is ultimately what we are talking about—the golden thread that runs through all our lives. When it comes to attracting disabled talent, role models are critical. I have already said that less than 3% of public appointees are disabled people. That means that the number of role models is small but incredibly important.

The Government should undertake a serious mentoring programme for all diverse potential applicants for public appointments. They should look at the multipliers, connectors and conduits; at all the channels of the excellent organisations of and for disabled people; and, equally, at organisations across our society. If, for example, the Ministry of Justice was looking to have a disabled person on one of the legal boards, it should look to legal publications, the Law Society, et cetera—to go broad and deep on this. Innovation should be at the heart of everything we do. Why can one apply only with a relatively inaccessible application form and, irony of ironies, a pretty inaccessible monitoring form? We should do stuff differently; if we do not, how can we expect to achieve different results? Why have interviews? Why not have mock boards or shadowing? Think wide, think broad, think innovation. If we want public bodies which truly reflect and represent our fabulous, bright, beautiful and diverse Great Britain, we need to go about this differently.

Ultimately, we are talking about change. Change is not easy, but it is essential. When I was lucky enough to lead Channel 4’s Year of Disability in 2016, not only was I incredibly fortunate to lead a group of people called the Year of Disability advisers—which meant that I was the chairman of YODA—but we were able to put in place many positive impacts both for broader society and for the channel. As noble Lords have mentioned, we need people to identify as disabled people. We were able within seven months though specific, targeted interventions to take the level of our people at Channel 4 self-identifying as disabled from 3% to more than 11.5%. Change is difficult, but it does not need to take a generation.

To take us to the big level—the next 50 years—heading not only towards my noble friend’s big, fabulous birthday party, what do we need to see? Many years before that point, I would hope to see a complete elimination of the attainment gap for disabled people in education. I would want equality of opportunity and representation in all areas of employment and in every aspect of our public life.

As I have already said, it is pretty simple if we take it down to the question of talent. We need government, civil servants, private sector, public sector—all of us—to look harder and further for that talent, not least that held in all the fabulous disabled people up and down the country who, sadly, all too often do not get the opportunities. Ultimately, our business needs to be about this, addressing the fundamental issue that still blights our society. Talent is everywhere; currently, opportunity is not.